Serum
by Firefly99
Summary: [MGS2] [EmmaxFortune] [Highly experimental] When they come to shut her up, she’s OK with it, because she wasn’t planning on talking much anyway and at least it would give her an excuse not to talk for a while.


When they come to shut her up, she's OK with it, because she wasn't planning on talking much anyway and at least it would give her an excuse not to talk for a while. They're obviously surprised, because they heft their guns vaguely in her direction as she sits down and sighs and smiles and waits and the cat-man comes towards her, syringe in hand, and threatens her not to squirm. She doesn't squirm, she doesn't want to squirm, and what kind of a word is squirm anyway, she's a grown woman not a kid.

Ocelot decides she clearly can't be responsible for herself, but she asks him 'let me do it' anyway, and he says yes, which fitted his character – someone like him wouldn't let someone like her cheat. She looks at the syringe dully, looks at him – still fiddling with his gun fiddle fiddle fiddle click click click just shut _up_ cat-man shut it _up_ – and sticks it in her leg. She doesn't feel it going in. She knows how to – she's given herself so many nanoshots over the years she'd make a great junkie.

She knows it's truth serum, and serum that works – not sodium pentothal which sends you high as a sparrow on crack and even though it makes you tell the truth your perception of the truth isn't the same as anyone else's and so's usually pretty skewed. This was proper stuff – nanoes. In her mind she can feel the cold mercuric icy creeping, up her veins, up the arteries at the side of her neck, running through her brain and finding the right nerves and numbing them and shutting them up. Shutting them up so she can't lie, can't make things up, but she still sees the world with sharp eyes. She feels the side effect – her leg stiffens out in front of her and won't move, and at first she blames it on the needle and then realises they must have put something else in there too – they'd do that, wouldn't they? They'd done it before.

Scream it with me – _Fox…DIE…_

Of course that was stupid, though, because they needed her alive.

What followed was odd. They asked her questions. She told them the answers. She didn't have to think about that, she couldn't help it. She would have told them the truth anyway, but they wanted insurance. Not that Ocelot needed it. He could catch the smallest white lie hidden away in a word in a sentence in a stare in a box and shoot it dead. Abstract ideas eluded her – that was the serum for you – but she imagined that maybe someone had told him to do it. Or maybe he just knew that even if he found a lie that wouldn't mean he knew what the truth was.

They ask the kicker question, and she answers automatically – _he's very important to me, I do still love him_ and then she can't stop herself getting curious – _why do you ask?_ Ocelot fixes her and leans down over her and smiles and doesn't answer, and snaps his head around to face the soldiers he'd brought with him. He points a fingertip, and etches a box-shape in midair, then runs two fingers along his other palm.

"TV show, two words," she says because she can't tell herself not to and it's the first thing that comes into her head.

He glances at her and gets up and leaves and she's thankful.

* * *

It hasn't always been like this. This block had been her playground for a while. Computers are great to sink into because they make sense and aren't like people because if you tell them to do something they'll do it (although they also like to protest a lot so maybe they were like people _really_). That's the difference between an AI and a human – you could control an AI, even the smartest one, but never a human, not entirely, at least she thinks so – the cat-man would probably disagree. She believes her AIs have feelings because she'd programmed them to have feelings, but she doesn't know if they're real feelings or not because that's a whole area of philosophy she really doesn't want to get into – thinking in and out of Chinese boxes and logical paradoxes – but if her machines don't have real feelings than she doesn't either because they're wired up like a brain, like her brain. GW has her personality in it, her memories – at least some of them, probably, she tried to get rid of most of them and she's fairly sure she did it properly but the brain keeps all sorts of back-ups and stuff so who knows, it could be EE, not GW.

* * *

In her room, she hears three explosions, one after the other.

The second explosion takes a while to happen and is really multiple explosions if you care and is preceded by a thrust and bang of jets and two men yelling a lot over speakers and it goes on _SCREEEEthunkdammit!usethisraideni'lltakecareofitFWWWISHthunkno!thunk_ until she finds herself curled up on the floor, arms crossed over her head to try and block out the noises, and tries to imagine that it's all a big spy movie. And if it's a spy movie, that must mean the spy would come and save her and take care of her and love her (even if only physically) and he'd introduce himself with his last name first and she'd be able to help him, and she wanted him to show up because anything anything _anything_ would be better than being trapped in here waiting for release and the noises go on and on and it's a nightmare happening, ringing in her teeth with each shout and explosion, and she finally gives in and yells _god just shut up_ and it does with an explosion so loud and final she knows it stops there –

– except it _doesn't_ stop there, because there's another one that actually knocks her flying off to the other side of the room and she can't hear a little while after it, and it scares her, and that is the third explosion and the last she hears in her room.

The first explosion was the worst, because it was the most sudden – all is silent and then it happens with a noise she can't even describe but it sounds like it's come from hell or something and she can make out, through the ringing in her ears, a man screaming a gurgling death-scream, and she panics, dragging her cramped leg over to the door of her hidey-hole and pounding on the door and watching it slide open and she yells _what the hell's going on out there_ and there's no answer and she goes forward and then she trips over her own dead leg and lands on her hands and it stares back at her, water, everywhere, she can smell the salt _chlorine_ and feel the bubbles probing her sucking her in wanting her dead and drowned and choked and she's trapped – she shrieks, and dives back in her room, and seals the door, and cries to herself, because even though she couldn't leave before she definitely couldn't leave now.

Now she hopes that Bond brought a plane with him, so she can escape into the sky.

Oh, why is the water so angry at her?

It should be angry at _him_.

* * *

She has a friend. One friend in this place. One human friend, rather, and one bird. They're both pretty similar, actually.

Her bird is fun to talk to, to make him say new things and new words, although he says some things that she definitely didn't teach him which begs the question who did? because she's fairly sure no-one else here would want to talk to a parrot.

Then there's her other friend. The biggest difference is that she's not that much fun to talk to.

She'd heard some of the others talk about her, a perfect soldier who never bleeds and always cries. But she thought that was ridiculous, because if you never bleed doesn't that mean you never get in the battle? Maybe this was a perfect coward instead. Like her, really.

She met her friend, finally, because it was her friend's job to see to her. She didn't know what she was looking for, but when she met her she knew straight away that this was the one they'd been talking about – the most beautiful woman in the world.

Her skin was radiant. It shone, unmarked, unscarred. Long fingers, long legs, green-stained sad eyes. A face, eyes, that said _once upon a time I used to be a woman but now I'm a soldier_.

And her friend wore practically nothing – form-fitting clothes, thin coat, boots that weren't even laced up. Nothing. If under some curse she'd been forced to become a soldier she knew she wouldn't go into battle wearing anything less than full plate armour or something like that, and she didn't think anyone else would be different. And it made her look delicate, and vulnerable, a goddess made of glass.

"You're the computer-girl," the most beautiful woman in the world greeted her.

"Hi," she responded, simply.

* * *

She eventually decides she's been a Bond girl long enough to try and work out how to get out of here under her own steam, because the spies seem to be a bit slow on arrival.

Her first plan involves the floor-height window, but that looks out into the empty caustic water. She considers sealing the blinds, but decides to leave them open in case she forgets where she is. She has to stop being so afraid –

– but she can't –

– but she's afraid of not being afraid –

– because then something terrible might happen without her being afraid to stop it happening to her, to keep her away from it all – all that water –

– and so she comes up with another plan and drags a pile of boxes in the centre of the room, climbs up one-two-three, wobbles _eek_, grabs the ceiling, deadened leg hanging ill and limp under her weight, jabs her fingernails into the gap between the fluorescent lights and wrenches and predictably falls. At least her leg doesn't hurt when it hits the floor, it's been numbed as if prepared for an operation.

She scrambles up and inches in painful careful wobble-steps towards the door which hisses open as she approaches and then she kneels down outside the pool of water.

She dips her hand in it. Time slows down. The light spirals off glorious chromatic rings of uncleaned oil, a faint oilslick skin. She watches it and tries to convince herself that it's pretty, but she trembles so hard at the knowledge she'll have to _have_ to oh god she'll actually have to _swim_ that it all trickles between her fingers and pools back into the water, making a crown as the droplets land.

She feels dizzy and dives back into her locker room and is fairly convinced she's going to be sick even though her body doesn't seem to agree.

Afterwards she starts toying with the node and uses it to hack into the soldiers's communications. They're under order to speak in English for the sake of Snake and Dead Cell, who no doubt speak Russian anyway but are probably just trying to be awkward, and they all speak it in varying degrees of ineloquent badness.

The only transmissions she can get are logs which are thirty minutes old – the most recent ones, anyway. Better than silence.

_Radio,_ comes the transmission from Strut F Warehouse. _Radio radio. Something terrible just happened – like a devil, hair and skin bleached white, surreal, didn't move like a human. Taking a sniper rifle. We tried to stop him. Now they're all dead. Called for back-up and not one lived._

She tells him he sounds cold considering his comrades all died horribly, and why isn't _he_ dead too?

Radio-man responds. _He must be the one Solid Snake keeps talking about. He's still mortal. Don't fight him head-on, and we might have a chance._ Radio-man is the most eloquent soldier. That must be how he got the job. _And speaking of snakes, people have told me they've seen a man who looks just like Solid Snake, except younger with blond hair. Some of the soldiers are convinced it's the ghost of the more…fluid triplet – even Shalashaska has suggested it once or twice._

_I didn't think Shalashaska believed in fairy tales._

_He used to work with a floating psychic. Anything's possible._

Click.

* * *

It was her beautiful friend who sent her here, where she could be safe, if climbing the walls with a mixture of claustrophobia and boredom (literally – she managed to get onto the top of one of the lockers and sat there for a while and scratched the word EMMA into the paint on the top of it and then got back down because her leg wasn't having any favours done to it).

They'd known each other for almost a week before the question finally got asked. She'd looked up at her in her usual mix of awe and bewilderment and was amazed that she'd had the audacity to ask her.

"No," the goddess replied. "I never bleed."

"Why don't you bleed?"

"I'm lucky."

"Well, I'm not," she responded, sheepishly adjusting her glasses. "I don't bleed a lot. I try not to get into situations where I'm going to bleed."

"I'm not lucky either."

She voices a contradiction, of course – I see your logical fallacy, lady, you're not that perfect – but realises too late what the goddess actually meant and pales.

"You've seen Hell too, haven't you?"

Hell. Ha-ru. Hal.

"What did you lose?" she asks in a schoolgirl voice, thin and weak and small.

"Everything."

"Who took it from you?"

"Solid Snake," she says, relishing the name, and it builds and ebbs and hums around her. "A wicked snake with his tail wrapped around the world."

She sees the mythology reference and is ashamed that the first thing that pops into her mind is that one video game with that world-snake in as a summon and so shakes it away.

"Hold on a sec," she realises, "if he took everything, why do you work for him?"

It's the first time she's seen the goddess laugh in a way that isn't thick with bitterness, but genuine, and the first time she's seen her cry in a way that isn't dead with sorrow, and so she chuckles along with her out of surprise.

* * *

There are bottles floating in the water, half-full, near the bottom, bobbing there like dark fish. Cans on the surface, floating. A poster of a woman, peeled off the wall by the currents, ink running until the woman blurs into something else, dye curling through the water. It's lively as the Great Barrier Reef.

She drops a coin into the water. It coils down in slow motion. Can she get it back? She snatches her hand in, but it falls out of her grip and clinks softly on the steps below. If she leant over a little more, she could get it –

– no. I can't go further in I can't I just can't it'll _kill_ me I'll _die_ –

She backs straight back into her room and boots up the plant schematic to check how long this Strut will hold out if it's flooded.

Then she turns off the node, because her fingertips are numb and she's having trouble using the keys.

* * *

One time, the goddess gives her a gun and tells her to shoot her.

She turns it over in her hands – knowing nothing about guns, she weakly assumed that if she did know something about them she'd probably think it was a good gun, since it was in good condition and felt sturdy and solid – and laughed emptily in a way she'd learned from the goddess.

"I was raised in England," she says. "I've no idea how to make this work," she says. "You might as well ask me to fly. Or swim," she says. The soldier who never bleeds doesn't listen to a word. Eventually she leans backwards onto her right foot like she's seen gunners do in movies and pulls the trigger and nothing happens and she works out where the safety is with a little work, turns it off, and fires. The noise is louder than she would have anticipated – so much louder than on TV.

_Oh what have I done!_ she panics before noticing that the bullet is lying harmlessly to the soldier's feet. She tells her again to try but to keep her eyes open this time.

She does, because _she_ asks – fires three shots, watches a white trail extend around her and fly off to the side after each one.

"They can't touch you," she realises. "Nothing can touch you."

"Nothing can touch me," responds the goddess, and her tears look dark and metallic.

She imagines the goddess in a bird cage, a bell jar, captured there, completely intangible, flapping her wings like a butterfly, soon to run out of air as everyone watches and fall and beat and panic and finally choke and suffocate as if she's breathed in water.

* * *

_**140.00**_

_beep_

_buzz_

**NO RESPONSE**

_**140.01**_

_beep_

_buzz_

**NO RESPONSE**

**_140.02_**

…sooner or later, someone'll hear her. Maybe even James Bond.

**_140.03_**

Ad nauseum doesn't even begin to describe it.

* * *

The last time she sees her beautiful friend is when she ends up safe, here.

She's even quieter than usual, and her back is arched all stern and it's as if she's about to snap and break someone's neck so when she reaches her arms around her, all warm and bare, she flinches away first thing, and the goddess relents.

"No," she says, trying to look less awed than she is. "I was surprised. You haven't lost me."

Lady Luck gives her usual bitter laugh, and wipes away the tear coming down her cheek. When she cries, it is a thing of beauty. Nothing like gawky old Emma Emmerich who turns all red and streams wetly when she cries. A single, beautiful tear, like you only get in movies.

But she understands. She's seem so many of the same things. But she's gone out for revenge, and yet –

– no, of course, not. She's gone out for revenge, too. That's what it is, revenge.

She expected her hands to slide past the goddess's elegant shoulders in a trail of white smoke, but they don't and they land and she's close enough to hear her heart pound in the silence in her head, and can only just, just work out that her head is lying against the goddess's right.

She doesn't taste of anything. She wasn't sure what she was expecting her to taste like. Wine, maybe, or gunpowder, or tears. But real people don't taste like things like that.

She feels her lonely hands looking for a hold, and crunches her fingers up in the wild curls of hair at the back of her neck and wonders how she was allowed to enter the bell jar too.

She's a little tired and rather more comforted and even quite sad when the goddess –

– no, when Helena, the woman, who had a life and was happy and she even played the saxophone and was normal and bled and was a woman -

– leaves her, with only the words _keep still and safe, anything could happen, and I won't risk your death, I promise_.

So she heads into the locker room, because that's safe.

She wishes just a little that Helena had told her to bring a book.

* * *

When the spy finally comes to rescue her, he's very pretty and too blond to be even the blondest Bond and he actually wants her to go in the _water_, but she goes with him because that's the only option she has. 


End file.
